


six weeks (piece of your heartbeat)

by hellcatspangledshalalala



Category: SK8 the Infinity (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Dorks in Love, Everyone Is Gay, Fluff, Humor, Idiots in Love, Kyan Reki is a Ray of Sunshine, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Skateboarding, Softness, coffee shop AU, langa is smitten
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29902392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellcatspangledshalalala/pseuds/hellcatspangledshalalala
Summary: "The first time Langa sees him, his brain does a keyboard smash.He’s tall, a little shorter than Langa, but not by much, skin tanned and smattered with faint freckles. His hair makes up for the centimeters he’s missing: bright red and sticking straight up.Langa stares at him for a few seconds. He has suddenly forgotten how to use every part of his brain."In which Langa is a barista and Reki is the cute skater who keeps dropping by his cafe
Relationships: Hasegawa Langa/Kyan Reki, Nanjo Kojiro | Joe/Sakurayashiki Kaoru | Cherry Blossom
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	six weeks (piece of your heartbeat)

**Author's Note:**

> accompanying playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5TfoAWthqhp9XVy34jrOZz
> 
> title is from the beach bunny song

The first time Langa sees him, his brain does a keyboard smash.

He’s tall, a little shorter than Langa, but not by much, skin tanned and smattered with faint freckles. His hair makes up for the centimeters he’s missing: bright red and sticking straight up. 

Langa stares at him for a few seconds. He has suddenly forgotten how to use every part of his brain.

“Heya!” says the boy, leaning forward on the counter. He has a bandaid over his nose and one on his head, and his eyes crinkle up slightly when he smiles. “I’ll have a hazelnut latte, with extra sugar please?”

This is the part where Langa remembers they are in a coffee shop and he is serving as a barista, in the place he has worked in for two months. He needs to go and make coffee, tell the bandaid boy his total, and then ask for his name to write on the cup. 

He doesn’t do any of this. He just tilts his head to the side.

“Hey,” says bandaid boy, titling his head in the exact same way. “Are you alright? Do they not sell those here?”

“No, we do,” says Langa. He blinks. Rubs his eyes. “Your name?”

“Reki,” bandaid boy says, and Langa’s hands tremble slightly as he writes the name on the cup.

Making the coffee . . . is difficult. Reki doesn’t go to sit down at one of the tables. He just hoists himself onto the counter and swings his legs so that they’re dangling over the edge.

“How does that work?” He says, pointing to the coffee machine. Langa spares it a glance. He’s been working here for two months—he and his mom have just moved, so he’s taken a job to help her with money—and his knowledge of coffee, at best, is absolute shit. He can barely make it, but the shop was low on staff, and his manager, a tall young man named Cherry, who had started the store up purely to spite his rival and draw away customers, so he doubts it will matter anyways.

“Coffee machine mechanics. Not really my specialty,” he says, and Reki laughs as if he’s just told a great joke.

“But you’re not into building? Figuring out how stuff works?”

“Not really,” Langa says, filling the machine with coffee beans and flicking a switch. He’s never really been a mechanics sort of guy. His interests right now are a whopping total of money and snowboarding, and one of them isn’t possible, not with them living in Japan.

“REALLY? IT’S SO COOL!” Reki starts forward, then hesitates. “Whoops. Am I—?”

No, not technically. Langa let an old woman behind the counter to get a closer look at the menu, and Cherry bitched at him for ten minutes. It’s against the rules to let Reki here, and he shouldn’t be doing it anyways.

“It’s okay,” Langa finds himself saying, hands moving mechanically to turn off the machine and gather his bottles of syrup. “I don’t really mind.”

He’s treated to a full wattage smile, and then Reki is moving off the counter to stand beside him, flicking at the coffee machine. He’s not really doing anything, just fiddling with the switch nervously, but he’s close enough that Langa can smell his sunscreen and the tang fruity gum. It reminds him of summer, and makes his head spin a little, and they’re too close, too close for strangers.

Langa notices, belatedly, that Reki has band logos drawn on his hands.

“So,” Langa says at last, leaning over his shoulder. “Any discoveries?”

“Not unless you want me to take apart the machine?”

He sounds hopeful. Langa, despite himself, snorts.

“I’m guessing that’s a no,” Reki says, just as cheerfully, when Langa doesn’t answer and instead moves on to adding syrup to the coffee. “Don’t want to get you in trouble anyways.”

“I get the sense that you do that.”

“What?”

“Get people in trouble.”

He offers up a smile to let Reki know he’s joking, and Reki snorts too. He’s silent as Langa finishes making the coffee, then realizes he’s on the wrong side of the counter, and hopes over to the other side.

“Well, nice to meet you . . . “

“Langa.”

“Langa,” Reki says slowly, as if testing it out. The sound of his name in Reki’s mouth makes something in him swoop, and he turns away to brush coffee grinds off the counter. He doesn’t want to look at Reki’s face. “Well, nice to meet you! I gotta run!”

“Places to go?”

“Skating!” He whoops and pumps his fist in the air. Langa is totally not rewatching him from under his arm as he leans over. Not at all. “There’s a huge race!”

“Skating?” Langa repeats.

“HELL YEAH! I’ll tell you about it afterwards, it’s so cool!”

He can’t snowboard. How is it possible that Reki is going to ice-skate?

He realizes his mistake a moment later when Reki hoists a skateboard that was previously hidden behind the counter and grins. It’s decorated with bright colors and has a lighting stripe on the top.

Skateboarding, Langa thinks, blinking. Of course it’s skateboarding, not ice skating. His brain, apparently, has decided to trade basic knowledge and common sense, with memorizing the pattern of Reki’s freckles and the way his head tilts slightly to the side.  _ Offuckingcourse _ .

“Skateboarding,” he says to himself again, but when he looks up, Reki is already cruising out of the shop.

***

It’s late afternoon when Langa finally leaves the coffee shop. His shift ended two hours ago, but Joe, Cherry’s rival, made the wonderful decision of deciding to stop at the shop, and things kind of spiraled from there. Langa didn’t even know it was possible for two grown men to be so petty. He has coffee beans in his hair from the fight.

It’s not like there’s much waiting for him somewhere else, so he doesn’t really mind. His mom works late, and he hasn’t made any friends yet. His classmates are friendly enough, but it’s hard for him to connect with them, as they’re all friends already. Langa doesn’t exactly mind: he’s not a people person, but it would be nice to have someone he can hang out with. Maybe he just needs to give it time.

Honestly, it’s not the friends that bother him, but more the lack of ‘something’. Every day, he gets up, goes to school, goes to the coffee shop, and then comes home. Back in Canada, he had snowboarding as something to look forward to, but here, the days are a long, scraping drag, like the screech of metal against pavement.

His world expands to his school, Cherry’s Coffee, and their new, drafty house. That’s it.

Langa reaches home twenty minute later. He kicks off his beat up converse, dumps his schoolbag on the floor, and jogs upstairs. His room is still mostly blank: the posters he own lie on the floor, and boxes pile up at the side. He doesn’t really have the heart to unbox them, so they go untouched, slowly collecting dust. It feels wrong to decorate, so he leaves them be.

Langa heads straight for the shower, tugging off his now coffee-scented clothes, and turns up the water as high as possible. He sits there, on the floor on the shower, rubbing his skin until he’s free from grime or sweat or whatever has collected during the day. The water is going cold when he finally gets out. He dresses in a hoodie and sweatpants, then jogs downstairs to start homework.

When his mom finally comes home, Langa has finished his assignments and has dinner cooking on the stove. He’s learnt to cook over the last few months: with his mom working late and his dad’s death, there’d been no one left to cook, so he’s had to take it up himself. 

“Hi mom,” he says when he hears the familiar pad of footsteps behind him. He can smell her perfume over the smell of garlic and herbs, and he turns down the heat of the stove to turn and give her a hug. 

“You made pasta?” says his mom, leaning over his shoulder. Langa nods. “Thank you!”

“No problem.” He gets out a strainer and moves to drain the pasta. His mom watches as he navigates back to the stove and adds it to the sauce. He’s not the best cook, but he’s good with what he’s got. “It’s the least I could do. How was work?”

She tells him about it as he finishes up and they sit down together at the table. The food is fine. His mom chatters on about something her boss said and Langa asks questions when appropriate. It’s the same as every night. At least this part of the routine he doesn’t mind.

“Anything interesting happen today?” his mom asks finally, as she sets down her fork.

Bizarrely, Langa thinks of Reki and the way his hair curls over the back of his neck. He looks away, dropping his head and putting his hand to the back of his neck, and tries to ignore the color flushing his face.

“No,” he says. 

His mother doesn’t mention how his voice cracks, or how his hands shake slightly when he reaches for his water glass. She just nods and says, “Okay. And how was work?”

Langa thinks of Reki again, and resists the urge to flush red.

“Fine,” he says, and that’s the end of that.

They finish eating in silence. Langa does the dishes and tells his mom to go lie down. She offers him a thankful smile and heads off to her room; Langa waits until she’s gone before rubbing his eyes and letting out a long sigh.

_Someday_ , he thinks, looking at the same old room and the same old city. _Someday, things will be different._

***

“Who’s that?”

Langa looks up. It’s Saturday, which means the coffee shop is full, and he has no idea who Miya could possibly be talking about.

“Who?” Langa says slowly. Miya snorts and swings himself off the counter. Langa has no idea how a kid his age is working here when Langa himself barely got in, but he figures there’s no denying the wishes of a Japanese national team hopeful. It doesn’t help that Miya is also 8 tons of whoop-ass packed into an 80 pound body and has a habit of yelling at the customers more than they yell at him. Langa’s not sure if Miya’s ever heard the word ‘no’ in his life.

“Him. Over there.” He points to the window. It takes Langa a moment to realize who he’s talking about.

It’s Reki. He has his face pressed up against the window. His cheeks are all smushed against the glass, and he’s waving his hands frantically to get Langa’s attention. He’s wearing the same full-wattage smile like he did yesterday, and Langa feels like he’s just been put in a blender with how much his head is spinning.

“Friend of yours?” Miya says dryly.

Langa watches as Reki stumbles forward from the window and narrowly avoids getting hit by a bike. “I guess,” Langa says, just as dryly. He can feel his heartbeat jackhammer inside his throat. “We just met yesterday.”

“You seem real chummy.”

“What?”

Miya doesn’t have a chance to answer, because Reki is bursting past them to the front of the line. “Langa!” he says happily, and Langa forgets that they’re in the middle of a coffee shop, surrounded by customers. He rubs the back of his neck. Reki is so bright, in all neons, one long line of energy jittering through the shop, that it almost hurts to look at him.

Langa doesn’t look away though. He smiles, can’t even tamp it down.

“Hi Reki.”

“Hey!”

“Hey.”

Miya snickers. Langa pushes him off the counter. “A hazelnut latte?” he asks, remembering the order from yesterday.

Reki shakes his head. “Nope! I wanna try something different! Gotta learn the whole menu.”

Langa’s pretty sure the sound of him blinking is audible. “The whole menu?”

“Yeah! How else am I gonna learn what I like the most?” Reki smiles nervously and puts his hand to the back of his neck. “So, what do you recommend?”

“I don’t know.”

“ _ How do you not know!?!? _ You work here!”

“I don’t know.”

“Jeez,” Reki huffs, slumping across the counter. His lower lip sticks out a bit. Langa shouldn’t be looking at his mouth. “Boring.”

“I’m not boring. I’m just not a fan of the coffee here.”

“So you moved? Would explain why I haven’t seen you around before!”

“I moved from Canada two months ago,” Langa explains, as he reaches for a cup and sharpie. 

“There’s a lot of snow there, right?”

“You’re near the Americacas,” Miya says, snapping his gum. “Icky.”

“Americacas,” Reki repeats, snorting. 

“Coffee was a lot better there too,” Langa says, pulling a face. Japanese coffee isn’t bad, but he prefers it from Canada, with croissants and bagels in the early morning. “Anyways Reki, what will it be?”   
  
Something flashes across Reki’s face, and then he droops a little and stares at the menu. “One large americano? Extra sugar?”

“Americaco,” says Miya, snatching the cup from Langa’s hands. “Let me handle it.”

“Thanks?”

Miya winks, like there’s some joke that Langa is missing, then skips past him and to the coffee machine. Langa turns to Reki.

His hair is fluffy, falling in soft pieces over his head band and across his forehead, and he has freckles on his neck. They form a line, dipping into his shirt collar.

Langa’s hands tingle. He looks away.

“So.”

“Yeah?”

“How was skating yesterday?”

He doesn’t really know what he’s saying--he just wants an excuse to talk to Reki. But it must be the right thing, because the smaller boy is whooping a moment later and punching his shoulder. Langa recoils, startled, but Reki doesn’t seem to notice.

“DUDE. It’s so cool, you have no idea! Do you want to try?”

Try? Langa just asked about it. “No,” he says slowly, letting his voice trail off. Reki squints at him. Langa sighs.

“Maybe a little,” he admits. It had looked almost effortless when Reki did it, and it looks similar enough to snowboarding, right? 

“Here, then give it a try!”

“Not in the coffee shop.” 

“Sometimes in the coffee shop,” Miya says slyly, as he reaches to hand Reki his drink. Langa glares at him.

He’s surrounded by skaters, in reality. Miya is a Japanese national team hopeful and he’s pretty sure he’s seen a skateboard poking out of Cherry’s bag once or twice. And then there’s Reki, who seems to have made it his personal mission to get Langa to skate. It can’t be any better than snowboarding, but there’s not like there’s much going for him anyways, so he guesses he’ll give it a try.

“After then,” Langa says to Reki, moving to the cash register so he won’t have to meet the other boy's eyes. His fingers feel tingly and a little too sensitive. “For skating, I mean.”

“Hell yeah!” says Reki and pumps his hand in the air. “When is your shift over?”

“10?”

“Nice! I’ll swing by here around then.” 

He doesn’t leave yet though, just cups his coffee a little tighter and studies Langa’s face. His smile is hesitant. A little sheepish.

“Okay,” Langa says and swallows hard. “Nice. See you. Then.”

“Right.” And then Reki is skateboarding out of the shop, yelling “BYE LANGA” over his shoulder. Langa waits for the pressure in his chest to recede, slumping against the counter and pressing a palm to his sternum. 

Why is the other boy so interested in him? And did he really just agree to go skating? He doesn’t have a fucking clue how to. And why does he even care.

“Hey, slime,” Miya says, poking Langa’s arm. “What was all that about?”

“I’m . . . I’m not really sure.”

“Really,” Miya says dryly and crosses his arms.

“Yeah, really.”

“Then why is your face redder than his hair?”

Langa, with all of his strength, kicks Miya in the shins.

**Author's Note:**

> im gonna try to update this every week, maybe twice a week if i can.


End file.
